Kings and Queens
by patchworkdove
Summary: She'd fallen deep into the white rabbit's hole that was the Shadow Gallery's wonderland and she was entertained by V's madhatter's teaparties, but he still seemed to have stepped from the pages of a dragon's tale.


Evey remained unsettled between the vaulted and literature-buttressed walls of her new home. She hid meekly amongst the papery towers of innumerable texts and tales, this strange bedroom that was more well-stocked than any surviving public library. Curiously dipping in and out of the strange and exotic writing, she passed the time and evaded Him.

Him. Her captor had an impressive cache of contraband volumes that she had no-doubt would utterly thrill someone older and wiser than herself. Their significance was palpable to her, but frustratingly at the edge of her grasp. She had been too young when everything changed; she remembered too little of what had been lost under Norsefire's militantly polished boot. These things whispered to her with a transient touch, the ghost of an England passed, though she failed to be able to catch the words.

He, the mysterious V, had gathered these volumes of treasure and more. Objects and artworks of incomprehensively priceless value decorated every nook and cranny of his labyrinthine lair. He proudly announced that much of what he'd brought back to this glittering cave of wonders were the last of their kind; relics and echoes liberated from the edge of extinction to be fiercely guarded in his dark halls. V lived here in solitude, deep beneath the streets of London, coolly calculating with frightening wit and cunning amongst his massed hoard, completely unafraid of Parliament. He was adamant that they should be the ones fearing him.

Evey did remember the tales her father used to send her to sleep with as a little girl, comfortably archaic tales of an even older England. Beautiful damsels in distress, the brave knights who came to their aid, Kings, Queens, castles, honour and chivalry... V seemed to have stepped right out of this fanciful fantasy world. His voice like curled calligraphy and his vocabulary gilded with rare turns of phrase, he was a medieval manuscript made real, but he did not remind Evey of a noble White Knight.

No. He was far too dark for that. He always dressed in pitch black and charcoal grey. She had seen the terrible way V had delighted in his destruction of the Old Bailey, bringing the ornate building down in a smoking end of force and fury. He ranted and raved in fervent and burning outbursts that vowed to fight fire with fire, all with a silver tongue that could have persuaded anyone to eat from the tree of forbidden knowledge. V did not remind Evey of a knight in shining armour, despite him having rescued her from danger twice now. Lurking underground amongst his amassed riches and plotting his terrible vengeance, V reminded Evey of a great and much aggrieved dragon, right down to the reptilian impassiveness of that mask's crocodile smile.

He conjured up the image of a dragon in her mind, with all the strange and fearless nuances of a supernaturally powerful predator. He hunted packs of Fingermen in the night as if for sport and countered their bullets with knives as if to graciously even the odds in their favour. She had watched him toy with them, probing them with riddlesome questions and sharpening his wit on their hides before beating them with their own truncheons. He'd displayed little more than an air of nonchalance towards these wolfish men, where she had been terrified. But then, what would a meagre pack of wild dogs be to a dragon?

Her captivity only added to the likeness. Why dragons should have been so fond of capturing fair maidens in her bedtime stories had never been made clear to her, but it was a recurring theme. She didn't want to compare herself to the legendarily beautiful Princesses or unfathomably pure virgins from those tales, since she wasn't even close to being either of those things, but the similarity was there. Here she was, captive in his secret space, being kept hidden amongst the trophies of her strangely courteous host under the pretence of it being for the sake of her wellbeing. Perhaps it was, but these were distrustful and suspicious times and the whole situation set her ill at ease. Perhaps she was in fact just the latest addition to his collection; another thing that V had 'liberated' from the system purely for the purpose of denying his enemies. Maybe the damsels of dragons were just another glimmering thing to be added to the hoard. There were no Princesses of England anymore, and the land was so corrupted by the Fingermen's reach that sexual inexperience was as rare as hen's teeth. Perhaps she was merely 'as near as damn it' that he could get, and so easily acquired.

On the other hand, he did seem to enjoy feeding her. Fattening her up…

Evey slammed the huge hardback Brother's Grimm compendium closed, leaving Hansel and Gretel to their fate with the witch. That was quite enough of fairytales for the evening! Lord, now she wasn't even feeling convinced that next time she confronted V, he wouldn't flick a long forked tongue through that mask's slit-mouth.

It was all in her frightened head, he wasn't a dragon, he wasn't a Fingerman, and so far he'd been perfectly gentlemanly. Suspiciously so, but so nonetheless. Paranoia was her only excuse, but she was right to be so in this day and age. It kept you alive.

She crept from her bed and turned the heavy iron mortice key, unlocking the thick wooden door and easing it open on well-oiled hinges. It was then that she heard the music, low and muted, and gentle singing that was making a concerted effort to stay quiet out of consideration for a possibly sleeping guest. The instrumental contribution was foreign to her, but the words… she recognised those words.

"I want to break free.

I want to break free!

I want to break free from your lies,

You're so self-satisfied, I don't need you.

I've got to break free.

God knows!

God knows I want to break free!"

Her dad used to sing this song, always when he was roped into doing the hoovering. Evey could remember him belting this out at the top of his lungs and flouncing around with the vacuum cleaner, her mum giving him a mock telling-off for making such a song and dance out of housework and lamenting that men couldn't just get on with it and do a job properly. The image of V doing the same ridiculous theatrical cleaning as her dad used to was too good to resist and she padded silently across the flagstones.

"I've fallen in love.

I've fallen in love for the first time,

And this time I know it's for real.

I've fallen in love.

God knows, God knows I've fallen in love!"

There he was, Codename V. The terrorist with a liberal attitude to sharing his blades and bombs, the man that Norsefire told all of England was a savage, brutal killer and a threat to civilized society. There he was, the man who reminded her of a dark and brooding dragon, wearing his silly little pink and flowery apron over his usual black and grey wardrobe, with a little feather duster tucked into its bow-tied sash fastening at his back. He was pushing a broom around and giving it the odd flourish, moving in step with the music, but stopping short of the full-blown all-singing, all-dancing circus her dad would have made of it. It was odd enough that V was performing this bizarre ritual, but more strange that he was making such a half-measure effort of it.

"It's strange but it's true,

I can't get over the way you love me like you do,

But I have to be sure, when I walk out that door,

Oh how I want to be free, baby,

Oh how I want to be free.

Oh how I want to break free!"

He launched into whistling along to the synthetic-sounding guitar with his usual unrestricted gusto, but still stopped crucially short of the show-stopping waltzing around that she would have expected from him. V was the personification of exaggerated drama, but he wasn't living up to her expectations here.

Her presence couldn't have gone unnoticed forever, and when V turned to skirt back around the base of a column she knew he'd seen her. He stopped and straightened instantly, clutching the broom guiltily in his gauntleted hands and suddenly dwarfing it.

"I am terribly sorry Evey, I did not intend to disturb you."

Didn't intend to disturb her? After gleefully parading his destruction of the Old Bailey before her and stealing her away to this bizarre wonderland world that gave Alice's rabbit hole a run for its money? Even down to their mad hatter's tea parties where V would bring out a full and fancifully gilded tea service set –with home-made biscuits and sometimes cake- then sit there in his mask and chat without partaking of the platter as if it existed only in her mind. A one-sided tea break with the dangerous dragon of London? No, none of that was in the least bit disturbing in any way.

"You didn't, I just… needed to take a walk and stretch my legs."

They stood in a fragile silence, but the Wurlitzer carried on, merrily oblivious.

But life still goes on.

I can't get used to living without – living without – living without you,

By my side,

I don't want to live alone!

Hey, God knows, got to make it on my own!

So baby can't you see,

I've got to break free.

I've got to break free,

I want to break free, yeah.

I want – I want – I want to break free.

"What is this?" She asked, curiosity coming to the fore.

"It's 'I Want To Break Free' by Queen, 1984. They were a very popular staple of British working class social club and pub music, but all their works were blacklisted due the band's lead singer being of homosexual preferences."

Evey frowned, further confused by V's odd snippet of information, which only caused her question to spawn more questions. It was a song by a gay man so he saw fit to dance around in a pink apron? She hoped his music collection didn't contain any Carmen Miranda, less he start decorating his head with fruit in order to properly sing along.

"No, I mean…" She gestured vaguely to V's person, and his state of dress "my dad used to do this when he hoovered the carpet. Only he did it with more dancing."

"Ah ha, what fantastic humour! Your father sounds like he'd have been riotously good company. I suppose this…" V vaguely curtsied in his little apron "…would make very little sense to you having not seen the visual accompaniment which compliments this number. The music's video was a parody of soap opera characters, from the comically improbable arcs of Coronation Street. The performers all went about mundane household tasks while dressed in transvestitive drag, Freddie Mercury himself humorously hoovering the carpet while wearing fishnet stockings and a scandalously short leather miniskirt, bedecked in all manner of pink plastic jewellery. Ah, a crying shame that the general public should be denied really. Nothing else quite makes housework as enjoyable, with the possible exception of Erasure. I like to do a little bit of ironing to Erasure occasionally. I really don't know what it is about the banned music of homosexual singers from the eighties, but it does shine a colourful light on mundane tasks."

She could hear the mirth in his voice. These songs really did seem to have made sweeping a more pleasant task. She couldn't help but smile at that strangely human and personal admission. That and the sheer craziness of all of this.


End file.
